Editorial: Will the adults please rescue America?

Wednesday

Jul 27, 2011 at 12:01 AMJul 27, 2011 at 5:01 AM

The jockeying between the parties of the kind seen Monday night between President Obama and House Speaker Boehner is no doubt fun and fascinating for hardcore political junkies. But for the average American citizen who sees the country going to hell in a handbasket and himself in the crossfire, not so much.

The jockeying between the parties of the kind seen Monday night between President Obama and House Speaker Boehner is no doubt fun and fascinating for hardcore political junkies. But for the average American citizen who sees the country going to hell in a handbasket and himself in the crossfire, not so much.

Clearly, the politicians are not nearly as fatigued in talking about this subject as some of us are in writing about it. With a week until the deadline at which some say America runs out of cash and begins to default on its debt obligations, the two parties are still shooting at each other, no treaty in sight. That's curious, because they don't seem that far apart.

The president and Senate Democrats would trim spending by $2.7 trillion over the next decade while increasing Uncle Sam's ability to borrow by $2.4 trillion, pushing the next debt ceiling debate into 2013. House Republicans would axe $1.2 trillion by 2021 and hike borrowing capacity by $1 trillion, which would require another debt limit vote early next year. The GOP also wants a vote on a do-nothing balanced budget amendment. Both proposals create committees to figure out where else to cut. Both take a pass on tax increases and entitlement reforms.

None of the above numbers mean much to anybody beyond the "trillion" sounding like a lot of money, but suffice it to say it's not that much relative to the red ink and the extraordinary acceleration in the accumulation of it. Republicans have obviously dropped any designs on privatizing Medicare, no doubt helped to that conclusion by the constituent response back home and the "what are you thinking?" commercial now showing nationally, including in this market, that has three senior citizens chastising those on Capitol Hill who would narrow that program's waistline by any amount. It's reminiscent of the "Harry and Louise" commercials that attacked and ultimately helped kill health care reform during the first Clinton administration.

In fact both parties have backed way off their early demands, opting instead to do as they largely have historically - "kicking the can further down the road," in Obama's words. Why? There's an election next year, and that is the dominant issue for both of them. As such these are political proposals, not substantive ones. That's what happens when power is divided, when neither side can give an inch, when ideology beats pragmatic governance and re-election, for enough to matter, trumps all else.

"If that means more to you than getting a plan and stabilizing the economy, you've really got to wonder why you're there," said Alan Simpson, the former GOP Senate leader who co-chaired the deficit reduction commission that pretty much wasted its time.

Obama and Boehner are not the primary problems here, as they were this close to a compromise deal last week that arguably was better, long-term, than either of the two left standing - the "grand bargain" that contained $3 trillion in budget savings through entitlement reforms and tax code tweaks, $3 in cuts for every $1 in revenue increases - but with their respective memberships balking, they backed off. Is it any wonder that frustrated Americans are as ready for a third party as they've ever been in the modern era? The concern here is that a fringe one would emerge, not the centrist bridge that is so obviously needed.

Now it's all over but the shoutin'. Votes on the dueling proposals could come as early as today, though they may not move the ball forward, either. At this point, they might as well do what this page has already suggested, which is to decouple the debt ceiling from other issues, avoid potential catastrophe, and then try to approach shrinking the size of government - which must be done - in a thoughtful and balanced way, not that one has much optimism in that regard.

Republicans need not heed Obama, but their patron saint, Ronald Reagan, who signed off on raising the debt ceiling 17 times during his two terms and wrote in 1983: "The full consequences of a default - or even the serious prospect of default - by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. ..."

The adults rode to the rescue then, and one continues to believe they will now.

Journal Star

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